Altra Olympus 2.0
I haven’t been shy in the past, around anyone that will listen, about the previous generations of the Altra Olympus (the 1.0 and 1.5) and my general opinion of those versions of the shoe is that while they are meant to be a hybrid road/trail shoe, they are too heavy for the road and have really terrible traction for the trail, so they just aren’t really good for either.
Most of us are familiar with Strava as a tool to track our activities and the fastest of us can claim bragging rights for KOMs, QOMs, and CRs but did you know for the rest of us, there are some pretty cool features you may not even know exist?
Spot Gen3 (Photo Credit: Spot)
Being an ultra runner living in Utah means a lot of my running and mountain biking adventures occur in the mountains and in remote locations that have poor or no cellular reception. I also tend to run/ride alone quite often, and lately, those runs and rides have been getting longer and longer. For the sake of my family, I started looking around at various options in the event that there was some type of emergency, and I stumbled upon the Spot Gen3.
Mt Hood 50k
I initially entered the lottery for the Mt. Hood 50 miler but was not lucky enough to be one of the 200 people accepted, and to add insult to injury, I was about 180 deep on the wait list (meaning my name was picked 380th or so).
Photo Credit: Altra Running
The Altra Lone Peak 2.5 is the 4th generation of the Lone Peak shoe (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5) and the third generation that I have owned. The Lone Peak 1.5 was actually my very first pair of Altra shoes, and I’ve been running in zero drop shoes ever since. To say I was excited to buy and try these shoes out is an understatement!
Squaw Peak 50
Squaw Peak 50 was my very first ultra distance race back in 2014 so it holds a special place in my running history. Most people thought I was crazy for jumping straight from half marathons to 50 milers, but jumping to a Marathon just didn’t seem like a big enough challenge.
Ogden Marathon 2015
I’m currently training for my third ultra, the Squaw Peak 50, on June 6, 2015 and my training plan called for 26 miles yesterday. I’ve never actually had any interest in running a marathon (even though I’ve run many half-marathons and a couple ultras) as I never really felt like pushing myself full speed for about 4 hours, and I’m not a huge fan of pavement/asphalt running.
Photo Credit: Skora
As any of my running friends know, I am a big fan of zero drop shoes for many reasons, and for the past few years have run exclusively in Altra shoes (Olympus, Lone Peak, and Paradigm in particular). Unfortunately, not a lot of shoe companies offer zero drop shoes yet, so I was very excited to see that Skora was releasing a new zero drop running shoe with a decent amount of cushioning, the Tempo.
One of the best uses of a GPS watch is the ability to keep an accurate workout log online with minimal effort. For Garmin users, the online portal that you sync your device with is Garmin Connect. For Suunto users, the online portal that you sync your device with is Movescount. Other brands have their own respective portals, but I’m only going to focus on these two for now since they are the dominant brands in the space.
Garmin fenix 3 – Photo Credit: Garmin
Updated: Mar 29, 2017
Runners have it good when it comes to GPS watch choices. There are more options than there are days in the year, and every month it seems like a new watch is released to the market. In fact, a quick stop over at DC Rainmaker (let’s be honest, if you can get away from there in under an hour, you are lucky!) will show you just how many choices there are. My goal with this post is to help narrow down the dizzying amount of choices, with a specific focus on ultra running. This is not a comprehensive list of all GPS watches out there, and there may be watches that aren’t on my list for one reason or another, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work for you.
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